The Hub Network Launch and New Shows

You're listening to the deep cast radio network

of podcast You're listening to Hello and welcome

to GeekCast Radio Episode 18. I am your host,

Dave Jones -Mike, and joining me is Steve Megatron

back from vacation. Hello. Hello. And for the

first time on the flagship show, Kevin Optimus

Solo Dumbass Thompson. I did not put that in

there. Today we are going to be talking about

the launch of Hezbro's TV network, The Hub, which

they stole from Steve. They stole that name.

Yeah, so I had that name up until about a year

or two ago Bastards. Yes. Yes So Steve you went

on vacation recently. Yes, I did. Yes, you did.

Yes. I went somewhere Actually, he went to Tennessee.

So he actually came by my city went down to tennessee

came back up didn't even bother to friggin stop

by and went back home to fucking michigan he

probably was on his way there's this big thing

called the traffic jam and yeah will suck yes

and traffic bulls it was a long night and a half

hours hopefully that wasn't all in the traffic

jam No, it was just a very long and tiresome

drive Yeah, just imagine if you have to drive

up to BotCon next year That would never happen

because I'm not going ever to BotCon unless it

comes to Michigan So it's been a while since

we've had a flagship show episode, you know said

this plenty of times on this podcast that this

is basically reserved for the main geek topic

shows and and Just we've been so busy with the

other shows that this one just kind of falls

by the wayside until we find some generic geek

topic to talk about and What better one to talk

about than the hub? I agree, and I'm already

getting sick of this fucking TV channel. Oh,

you don't even have it shut up. I'm getting sick

of it already Oh, God. I just am. I'm fine with

the old cartoons being on TV, so like, you know,

people that have kids like Michael Wilson can,

you know, show their kids on TV, Transformers

and G .I. Joe and whatever else other stuff that

used to be on in the 80s. That's great, but...

For the rest of us who actually have the damn

shows on DVD. It's it's useless It is great though

going down the TV guide and seeing that man Transformers

and GI Joe back to back to back on the TV guide.

I'm not gonna watch it. It's like oh, that's

awesome Yeah On a positive note since you don't

have the channel you should be happy to know

that the people as far as getting the shows directly

immediately onto YouTube that's been happening

so you know when Prime and whatever comes around

you shouldn't have to wait long to watch them.

Yeah and that's fine I mean I've already said

you know through other means I will get Prime

on my computer or whatever at some point to be

able to watch it but Prime, Transformers Prime

is one of those things where I'm absolutely ecstatic

about the voice cast but Depending on how they

mesh with the way the show actually looks That's

what's gonna determine my opinion if I can't

get through 20 minutes of the first episode.

There's no way in hell I'll watch the rest of

that series. That's what happened to me with

energon Well energon sucks. Anyways, I mean energon

armada and Cybertron. They all suck I could get

through 20 minutes of Cybertron I couldn't get

through 20 minutes of I can't remember if it

was energon or armada Megatron came back and

then I stopped watching because I didn't care.

I think was Armada I tried to watch and I couldn't

get through the first episode Cybertron I got

through most of it I Didn't say I liked it, but

I got through most of it. Yeah So I guess what

we're gonna do here in this episode is and I'm

sorry for why I don't know why the hell my voice

is Being all raspy and nasally and crap, but

I've only recorded an hour of podcasting tonight

before this but whatever I Think this is the

first time I've had problems with my voice in

over two years of podcasting. Um We're gonna

talk Kevin basically spent on our like 16 17

hours watching all the brand new shows That the

hub has launched I thought my DVR was gonna I

thought my DVR was gonna explode Your head would

probably explode. It almost did during one of

the shows. Well, hold off on that. The way we're

going to do this is we're going to do this morning,

afternoon, and evening, or prime time, or whatever

the hell you want to call it. That way, it stays.

So apparently, the early morning preschool shows,

it's called the Hubbub. Yes, it is. Are you serious?

Yep. They're calling the first block. They have

four different blocks of shows, and they're calling

the first one the Hubbub. fucking stupid and

that is early morning shows directed at a preschool

audience more kind of like either educational

or you know little tiny kids yes and those shows

in that block are in the night garden animal

mechanicals and mario go yummy and that's the

American and wood roots I think it's the what

what's but I have no idea who's what what's whatever

What twats it doesn't fucking matter. You didn't

even look at that one I I somehow I see I set

my DVR to record like last week And I must have

somehow when I was going through hitting which

shows to record I somehow missed that one So

that's the only one out of the new ones I haven't

seen which is kind of upsetting because I wanted

to see that one because It somewhat resembles.

The characters look interesting at least I'll

leave it at that So, as far as this block, like,

I mean, you said it's basically the early morning

kids preschool educational show type, like, how

are any of these shows educational? Well, they're

not really educational, I shouldn't say that.

I thought they were going to be since they were

directed at the preschool kids, but it turns

out that they are not very educational -based.

You know, it's still interesting I get you know,

there's probably some listeners that have little

kids out there So maybe they want to know which

ones are worth checking out and which ones aren't

right the first one in the night garden That

was originally some of a lot of these shows that

we're gonna talk about even though they're brand

new to American TV Some of them are not brand

new to TV around the world. So they got a lot

of stuff from other countries so in the night

garden is actually a BBC British show that had

already aired there, but it's the first time

it's aired in the US was yesterday, today, whatever

day it was. This is what I wrote down for in

the night garden. This is the one time I'm going

to read you straight from my notes. The first

three words I wrote was, this is disturbing.

Then I said, what are these creepy Teletubby

things? This is retarded. I don't know how any

human being could think this is watchable. This

was not the one that you text to me that your

brain was gonna explode. Yes, holy crap We start

right I see I thought that the show that your

brain was gonna explode was like down the line

Well, it was down the line and what I watched

because it wasn't on on Sunday Okay, so it was

towards the end of the ones that I recorded this

show It reminds you it's it's set up like the

Teletubbies where it's like this live Almost

live -action type background with these things

in these costumes that resemble no animal or

creature you've ever seen before. They don't

talk. They jump around, make hand motions, and

make noises sometimes. And then there's like

a narrator guy that talks to them every once

in a while. Can they possibly make children's

television any more dumb? I'm pretty sure if

children watch this show they will forever be

scarred and turned into like serial killers.

This is worse than Teletubbies. if that's possible.

The first thing I thought was, I thought it was

a combination of Teletubbies and Barney at first.

Shit, Barney is an improvement. At least he talks

English. Yeah. But these people don't even talk

or these creatures. And it goes and sometimes

it goes like minutes at a time without any dialogue

being spoken. And I try to follow some type of

plot line and I just couldn't. I eventually had

to stop the record before or stop the show before

my head exploded. So basically what this is is

a nightmarish version of Teletubbies meets Barney

meets Wally. Done by the British BBC people.

Well no wonder it's nightmarish, I mean hello.

This is the number one show in this block that

I would avoid at all costs. All right, what about

Animal Mechanicals, what's that all about? All

right, Animal Mechanicals was a Canadian show.

So again, it's, you know, keeping the trend of

getting shows that had aired in other countries.

Animal Mechanicals is kind of, it reminds me,

as far as the character designs, they look like

maybe what you would think of if, like, not the

regular Legos, but the preschool Legos, you know,

the ones with the bigger blocks? Mm -hmm, Mega

Bloks, yeah. Yeah, like the Mega Bloks. If Mega

Bloks was made into a cartoon... It might be

something similar to animal mechanicals It has

a decent peppy intro Like I said, they're Lego

like things but they all have mechanic some type

of power So like the one is has like he's mechanic

stretchy or mechanic strong or stuff like that

It's not horrible. I mean that's obviously strictly

for preschool and they show two two little like

10 to 15 minute segments per show It's about

a thousand times better than in the night garden

But it's kind of cool. There's like a little

t -rex character. There's like a There's all

kinds of like there's some animals. There's some

like car type characters But I could see kids

liking this one It's not too bad. Okay, I don't

know anybody that does the voices but You know

if I had a preschool kid if they liked the show,

I wouldn't say you couldn't watch it Okay What

about the the only American show in this first

block Marioco yummy Sounds like it should be

Japanese, but it says it's an American show um

I have no idea what these things are either There's

some type of blobs This is this is actually animation.

It's not like in the night garden where you got

like these weird like costumed Puppet type things

or whatever you want to call them These are actually

animated things, but the animation is had to

cost like two dollars to do They're like these

circles and squares and like ovals and whatnot

with legs and The design and the animation style

just sucks on this. The voice acting's good.

The voice acting has Brian Drummond, Kathleen

Wesoluk, Scott McNeils on this. So the voice

acting's really good. The story might be good,

but I just can't get past the cheap looking design

and animation and trying to figure out what the

heck these characters are. So, so far Animal

Mechanicals is about the only one that I would

suggest to anybody. That's pretty bad. And what

about the Woot Woot's or Wot Wot's or whatever

it's called? This one's coming from New Zealand,

so it's got that kind of flavor to it I guess,

but I haven't seen this one. The characters remind

me of something that you would see on the Muppet

Show or the Fraggle Rock. But I'm guessing it's

a little bit different since it's geared towards

preschool. I am going to watch this eventually

just to see what it's like. I have a little bit

higher hopes on this one than I did on any of

the other ones. So we'll hope that it's kind

of like animal mechanicals and at least worth

watching or watchable for preschool kids. But

the if I was to pick a block of the hub programming

that is the worst, it's definitely this hubbub

stuff in the morning. So luckily, it's all on

like from. Think it's like 6 to 9. Yeah 6 a .m.

To 9 a .m. Or something like that. So I'm never

like alive at that time of day anyway And the

other thing that I think is retarded is At least

the first two have names that halfway sound intelligent.

Yeah, and To me if the show's name isn't intelligent

Yeah, when I have kids they are never watching

that show, right? Yeah, and I don't know if I

could ever watch something called Mariyoko Yami.

That just sounds Japanese to me. I mean, I might

be able to watch something called the What What's

if they're like a cool type of creature type

thing maybe, but Mariyoko Yami just is disturbing.

None of this impresses me whatsoever. No, it

shouldn't. It shouldn't. And here we go with

the midday and afternoon block the first I'll

go down the list and then we'll go through each

quite each each show here for midday afternoons

You have the Twisted Whiskers show, which is

an American show Dennis and ganache er, which

is a British Australian show cosmic quantum cosmic

quantum ray It's a German show atomic Betty,

which is a Canadian show God. Pound Puppies,

yay. My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic, oh

god. Strawberry Short Cakes, Berry Bitty Adventures,

oh boy. And Deltora Quest, which is a Japanese

show and we will save the game show stuff for

later after we talk about these ones. This is

definitely a much more interesting block. Um,

infinitely so. This is some of these shows are

much more watchable than any of the hubbub early

morning stuff some of them are still bad But

it definitely has a good mixture if you have

kids They're probably gonna find at least one

or two shows that they're gonna like in this

block All right, what's what's the deal with

the Twisting Whiskers show? The Twisted Whiskers

show is actually one of my favorite out of this

block The the Twisted Whiskers show basically

there is it's kind of like The best I can compare

it to is almost like Looney Tunes slash Tom and

Jerry, that type of storytelling or plot lines.

You have I think four or five sets of creatures

here, or sets of animals that star in their own

segments. One of them is a dog named Gooser,

which not a great name, but he has his own segments.

Then there is a set of cats named Dine and Dash.

There is a bear called broken bear There is a

cat called tiny head that has a huge body in

a tiny little head And then I don't remember

if these are both dogs or not, but there's another

set called yelp and dander Also probably dogs

I assume they're dogs. The only ones I saw in

this episode, since they only show two segments

per episode, so every episode you're gonna get

a different set of the two headliners out of

the five, the one I saw was Gooser the dog and

Dine and Dash the two cats. What happened with

Gooser is basically you have a male figure that

owns this dog. He's never shown from... neck

up. You only see him from basically like waist

or stomach below. And he talks to his dog a little

bit but doesn't realize that the dog is as intelligent

or can think for himself or whatever. It's just

like a pet for him. And then Gooser goes around

and he's just doing his own thing and like in

this episode a squirrel came and like started

throwing stuff at him. So then he goes after

the squirrel and it's kind of like that whole

Wile E. Coyote Roadrunner type thing. Okay. And

that was pretty entertaining. I actually watched

that whole thing. There's not a lot of talking,

but there's a good music line, and it was entertaining.

And the second one had two cats that were kind

of a team, and they were tormenting this dog

that was owned by this fisherman that was trying

to keep a fish for this client he was selling

to, and the two cats were trying to eat the fish.

They're all kind of, like I said, kind of like

Tom and Jerry type stuff or Wile E. Coyote type

stuff, so that makes it entertaining. It was

pretty good writing, even though there's not

a lot of dialogue. And the second one had a cool

Popeye music back, like music lines throughout

the whole show. I don't know if they did that

intentionally to try to harken back to Popeye,

but you could definitely hear Popeye theme parts

throughout the whole show. And the same thing

with the second segment, all the humans were

only shown from the waist down. Yeah, this like

you said it sounds a lot like Tom and Jerry mm

-hmm I mean not not specifically Tom and Jerry

themselves But just like the background characters

cuz all of Tom and Jerry's human people were

waist down so right But it was definitely in

it for me not someone you know an older person

obviously that's not who this cartoon is aimed

at I was definitely impressed with it, and I

was entertaining the entire time I didn't fast

-forward through any of it, and it's all in CGI

so the graphics are really good Or the animation

style is really good. I think it's not graphics,

but whatever. Yeah, what did you think or what's

the deal with Dennis and Gnasher? Whatever the

name is Dennis and Gnasher might as well be Dennis

the menace British style. Oh God Dennis has this

horrible British accent as does everybody in

the entire show It's just a regular, you know

traditional animation style The theme song was

alright, but I just could not get past the voices

on this Yeah, they basically the the kid and

the dog are this trouble troublesome or mischievous

duo. The police are after them in the very first

episode There's two ten seven two ten minute

segments per show. But uh It's just it's like

a horrible British version of Dennis the Menace

I Would never watch it again if I had my choice

yeah, okay Moving on to cosmic quantum ray what

the hell is this cosmic quantum ray was actually

Decent it is about a boy. That's in I want to

say like junior high maybe age And he gets um

somehow goes to this ninth dimension he gets

whisked off into this ninth dimension I forget

how and Where he finds this guy named cosmic

array and team quantum And he becomes part of

that team in there. They are enforcers of natural

law. This is probably actually the most educational

out of all the shows I saw Because it does a

lot of like scientific stuff in it talks about

elements and stuff like that but basically there's

this this team with a cosmic ray this guy named

something buckethead or something like that these

two alien girls and this this uh teenager or

pre -teen and they basically battle these cosmic

villains it's it's pretty good um it's not something

for me but it's it's decent and then to go back

to the 80s there's an ending segment called bucket

worst cosmic universe where he gives like some

scientific facts the only problem i had is the

scientific fact he gave in this episode was so

would have been so over the heads of any child

watching this that they would have never understood

what he was talking about um decent voice cast

uh tom kenney uh voices cosmic ray or quantum

ray i guess is his name Sam Vincent voices the

kid Colin Murdoch voices a bucket worth Richard

Ian Cox is in there Matt Hill So it's got a decent

voice cast. Hmm But it's it's it's an okay. There's

only one segment So it's not like the other ones

where there was two segments within the half

hour. Just one half hour show, right? But it's

decent So you got you got quick strike in the

show, right? Yeah Alright, so moving on to atomic

Betty Um, Atomic Betty might as well be Cosmic

Quantum Ray for girls. Okay. Um, decent theme

song. I absolutely hate the style of animation.

It's more like the late 90s, early 2000s crap

animation that I've ranted about in other shows,

almost Dexter style. Hey, leave Dexter alone

now, come on. The girl again is a junior high

student, um, who... Whisk away or not. That's

just going to like some ninth dimension, but

she goes to this like secret Place where she

reports to this fish captain thing There's lots

of weird creatures that I don't know what exactly

they were supposed to be But she fights evil

and then she comes back to real world in her

school, basically one segment per half hour Taja,

Eason voice actor is Betty Len Carlson is actually

one of the bad guys I didn't know he was still

doing a lot of voice work, but that's kind of

cool. Wow, yeah, that is cool. If I had to compare

this one to the Cosmic Quantum Ray, maybe it's

just because I'm a guy, but Cosmic Quantum Ray

was better. Atomic Betty, I just didn't like

the animation style. Yeah. All right. Now, Pound

Puppies. Is this the original Pound Puppies or

is this new? No, it is not. It is new. It's new.

Fuck. This is an American show, obviously. It

is basically what I guess what you can consider

the third Pound Puppies cartoon that we've ever

had if you want to break the first one into two

different ones But none of the original Pound

Puppies are in this The Pound Puppies that are

there are named Lucky, Cookie, Niblet, Strudel,

and Squirt Now the animation on this one sucks.

Yes, I've noticed the picture that you posted

in the link yeah the the character designs suck

uh everything visually about this show sucks

um however the story is the writing in this one

when i watched this it was the best writing i

had seen up to that point there's going to be

a few later that are better than this now but

the writing is actually really good The story

is actually good for the age group that it's

directed towards. Basically, you have a pound

with these dogs that I named off earlier, which

are all different types of dogs, which is a little

different than the original pound puppies. The

original pound puppies were basically all the

same types of dogs, just different colors. This

one has a little wiener dog or a sheep dog. They're

all different types of dogs. And basically the

first episode that I watched a dog gets delivered

to this pound Thinking it's just a regular pound

then these dogs basically reveal that they have

like a underground like base command center where

they all like Run things and they have connections

to everybody in the outside world unbeknownst

to the the guy that keeps the pound which is

the horrible name of the dog catcher McLeish

So basically this is an animated version of the

movie cats and dogs Kind of and and basically

what they do in the first episode is they find

the one dog that gets delivered during the first

episode a new owner To and to adopt that adopts

the dog and takes him away So basically their

their motto is that they they can find a person

forever There's a boy for every dog or a person

for every dog a dog for every person and they're

gonna find everybody an owner They do, there

is a funny thing, they do use squirrels or I

think they're squirrels or chipmunks that are

in their command center and they use them because

they have opposed or not really opposable thumbs,

but they have basically the ability to do stuff

that the dogs can't do. Which was kind of humorous

the way they did it. Like I said, great writing,

good voice acting. Greg Berger, Danny Cooksey,

Eddie Deason, John DiMaggio. Uh, Rene Abrejanis,

or however you say his name. Eric McCormick plays

the main dog. He's the guy from Will and Grace.

Michael Rappaport. Betty White eventually is

going to be in it, but she was not in the first

episode that I saw. The only problem I have with

this is the way it looks is terrible. If they

would have done this with better animation, better

character designs, this would be a good show.

Oh yeah, I agree. Because the story, the story

writing is good. People know Pound Puppies as

a brand. I just don't understand why they made

them look the way they did. It looks lame. Yeah.

In my opinion. And being that I judge shows on

what they look like over anything else, if it

doesn't look good, I won't even bother. And that's

how kids usually do things too. A kid's gonna

be much more concerned about what the, you know,

the visual appeal than the actual storylines.

But at the same time, all of the kids' shows

nowadays are... pretty much this crap style animation

that somehow these networks get away with. Unfortunately,

maybe kids have been destroyed into the fact

that they just accept this as normal animation.

Well, that and they haven't had actual genuine

good animations. That's true. Pretty much the

80s and early 90s. Point taken. And give or take

off and on up until the 2000s. So what? No, go

ahead. I was going to say, so moving on to My

little pony friendship is magic. All right, this

one basically suffers from the exact same thing

that pound puppies does the The character designs

and the animation style sucks And if you view

the pictures of the my little ponies You will

you know, if anybody views it goes to hubworld

.com or you know btva or wherever you can go

to get pictures of it You'll see it immediately

The the ponies just in my opinion don't look

as cool as they could They look flat There's

no depth to them in my opinion But just like

pound puppies the stories are actually good the

writings good the voice acting is good It's just

the look that I don't like This is also the first

one that had the first one of the new shows aired

on the hub that had a This was part one of a

two -part pilot basically Which I thought was

interesting and a good idea that they actually

had a couple that had two parters to start the

to start the series with, instead of just having

a one -shot episode to begin with. So there is

a little more continuity in this one, I guess.

It does have a lot of homages to the classic

My Little Pony theme songs and music. So you'll

hear a lot of stuff during the show that will

remind you of the classic My Little Pony if you

were exposed to that. Apparently the My Little

Ponies have the force. Because in the one of

the very first scenes the one uses her unicorn

or whatever to like move objects Uses her horn

or whatever and she's not a unicorn but whatever

whatever they are She uses her her horn to move

all kinds of different things like she's like

Luke Skywalker or Yoda or something There's a

variety of characters Twilight Sparkle spike

returns from the the 80s version There's a character

named Applejack Rainbow Dash Fluttershy And the

bad character that's introduced in the first

episode called Nightmare Moon. Tara Strong voices

the main pony, Twilight Sparkle. Most of the

other cast is, you know, there's Kathy Westlock

that shows up again, Tabitha St. Germain. So

the voice cast is pretty good. That's one thing

that seems like the Hub's been doing a pretty

good job at so far besides the British sounding.

Dennis the menace But like I said this one can

basically be summed up just like pound puppies

good writing good stories But a good voice acting

just I don't like the designs on either one of

these Now we move on to strawberry shortcakes

very bitty adventures I'm not a hundred percent

sure because I don't know what the stages are

that between CGI and what? is just short of CGI.

I believe this is a CGI show. Didn't you watch

it? Yeah, but sometimes I have a hard time judging

between actual CGI and stuff where just the background

is CGI or just the characters are CGI. Because

some shows only do the characters in CGI, some

do the background, some do all of it. So I'm

not 100 % certain that everything in this show

is CGI, but there are definitely parts of it

that are. Okay Which automatically puts it above

my little pony and pound puppies as far as visual

look, you know, the way it looks Mm -hmm pretty

good themes song just like the other ones. There's

only one segment. It's basically a 20 22 minute

show There's it's not broken into a bunch of

different ones. I love the character designs

on this one. I love the style It's all the old

strawberry shortcake characters strawberry shortcake

orange blossom lemon meringue plum pudding raspberry

tart and blueberry muffin They do have cell phones

and whatnot, so it's kind of modernized. I would

say this is a pretty good show for girls. The

stories are very much like the original stories.

This one is as close to the original with just

updated graphics, basically. And the voice cast

isn't quite as good as My Little Pony's and some

of the other ones, but it's still pretty good.

And finally for the actual afternoon block, and

then we'll move into the game shows, is Deltora

Quest, and this is a Japanese show, great. This

is, uh, so far the only show on the hub that

I've noticed that is anime. Okay. Um, which,

if you don't know what Mike and I's opinion on

anime is, watch an episode, or listen to an episode

of Tombcast. Well, it depends too. I can do like

a few such as Dragon Ball Z, but other than that

I don't Yeah Again, this is continuity based

which is a plus for me It has a pretty intense

intro No lyrics or anything, but pretty intense

music and action scenes And it does all this

first episode did a whole lot to talk about the

origin of this Japanese show and of the story.

It's again just like a My Little Pony. It's a

one the first of a two -parter and basically

what you have is you have originally there was

these seven tribes and they had these seven magical

gems that they put in this belt that the king

wore which kept this evil shadow lord kept him

at bay basically and the land that they're at

is del torre which is why it's called del torre

quest but basically at some point the belt gets

destroyed and the gems each of the seven gems

is cast out into the basically the seven most

dangerous areas of the land And the last king

that was king when the belt got destroyed kind

of went into hiding. And what the show picks

up as is one of the kids that wasn't around back

then, who was growing up, has now kind of taken

on the task to go gather these seven gems to

place them back in the belt and then they're

supposed to be given to an heir to the throne

who can then fight off the Shadow Lord. Wow,

this sounds like a knock off of Dragon Ball Z.

They have to grab seven orbs. or it could be

a knock -off of Sonic the Hedgehog 7k else so

besides being knock -off the writing seems to

be decent even if they're copying it from stuff

the I assume this is all dubbed being that it's

an anime show and the voice acting or the voice

the voices do not line up at all sometimes with

the mouth movements So that's kind of disturbing,

but I can see some I can see kids getting into

this yeah, yeah And we're gonna close out to

the all the new stuff that they've they've put

out with game shows Picture Eka and family game

night now. I want to start with family game night.

I'm assuming This is just gonna be a show showing

Families playing different Hasbro games because

I've seen family game night commercials Where

they you know where they like play Monopoly or

well funny you should say that they actually

Before the hub launched earlier this week or

weekend. Anyway, we actually saw it and it was

on regular Discovery Channel. Mm -hmm so Yeah,

it's it's kind of interesting. I think this one

might be actually one of their more popular shows

Well, it kind of harkens back to the early 90s

with all the game shows that like Nickelodeon

used to play and all that kind of stuff. Yeah,

it's kind of like a cross between double dare

and some other stuff. I mean, it's not really

double dare, but it's kind of got that feel to

it. But it's definitely something out there that

there's not much of this out there right now.

It's kind of a harken back to the, you know,

80s, 90s game shows. And, you know, there's not

a lot of that out there. So I could see this

being something that could catch on possibly.

What they do is they take of I don't know how

many different board games or Hasbro games that

they will, you know, fashion into a game. I've

seen commercials that have something to do with

Connect 4, but that wasn't in the first show

that I saw. The first show I saw is an hour show,

first of all. So it's one of the Hubs only shows

that last an hour long. And what they do is they

take two families of four and they go through

a set of, I believe, five different games. The

one I watched, they started with Scrabble. And

what there was is there was a big board with

five letters on there. And they had so much time

to rearrange the letters into as many five -letter,

four -letter, three -letter words as they could.

And they were basically competing with the other

family. That one wasn't that great. But at the

end of that, then they get to go pick this, like,

Monopoly card that's going to have some type

of mystery amount of money on it that they don't

know yet. And then they go move on to the next

one, which was a... or actually the first one

right before the Scrabble was one called guess

who and what they did is they put a picture of

a celebrity and a picture of an item up there

and You basically had to say which one? Which

one was older Yeah, yeah, that wasn't called

guess who I'm sorry that was called cranium I

was gonna say, they're basically turning the

board games into live -action game shows that

they can play. I mean, I'm sure like with Scrabble,

or like if they use Trouble or Sorry, I'm sure

they'll have the board game eventually, or even

Monopoly, but they're basically taking the actual

board games and making them television shows.

I mean, that's cool, but... A few of them they

did pretty well. They had a guesters one where

they had three of the four family members hanging

on this like hanging on by these like straps

from the ceiling or whatever and they had to

do guesters in midair and the person had to guess

and if you got it wrong or passed or whatever

they would drop and then you'd move on to the

next one and they had so much time to get as

many right as they could. The best one they had

was a bop -it one. They basically had this octagon

set up with eight different bop -it style things

like you know bop it or pull it or twist it or

whatever they had eight different ones of those

and each of the family members stood around that

and then they started the game and the the middle

circle gives these directions and if you are

if you wait too long to do your thing or if you

if someone does it out of turn or does the wrong

thing they get eliminated and it goes until there's

only one person left or one team left that was

actually pretty fun to watch um and then every

once while they would either reverse or Rotate

or whatnot and some people would move and some

people wouldn't and they'd get booted out So

that was pretty cool. And then the last one they

did was an operation one And they had this giant

operation thing and you had to pull a thing You

know the different things out of the body or

whatever without hitting the edge And once you

pulled it out each one was worth different points.

You had to go through this Pathetic, I mean it

reminded me of a double dare obstacle course,

but it was nowhere near as cool So you had to

pull the item out, then you had to limbo under

the stick and jump over these things and go through

this big Kleenex box and then put whatever you

had grabbed on this board that gave you that

many points. So those were the games that they

showed the first one. Every single game you won

a prize if you won. So they gave away a kayak,

a helicopter ride, a telescope, a hot dog cart

and a Skechers gift card or something like that.

And you got one of these cards that had a certain

amount of money So then you put at the end of

the game show you put all these cards into this

machine and it would tell you how much money

was on each card and One of the cards if you

pull if you had it would have been fifteen thousand

dollars And whoever has the most money wins the

game and wins a trip to the Caribbean But both

teams get to keep however much money they got

So one team went home with two thousand dollars

the other team went home with about six thousand

plus the Caribbean trip But it was it was decent

show like I said, I've seen commercials that

have connect for and other things So I'd be interested

to see what other shows or what other board games

they incorporate into it, right? And the host

to it. The host was good. The host was a Todd

Newton who's done. Oh, yeah, I like him Yeah,

and he did a pretty good job. Yeah, he used to

do He was doing the new version of pressure luck

for a while. Yeah, very cool So what is picture

Eka picture Eka was not very cool with a horrible

title like that i can imagine there was some

creepy guy in the corner playing like a one -man

band guy that was like playing guitar and whatnot

but he was like not dressed up and like all like

creepy looking um anyway he bothered me but uh

there was basically two teams they were both

three person teams um and they had to find it

was it's all about finding these cards that have

a certain figure on them faster than the other

team and it just was really stupid They like

they had to at the end they were tied together

like the three -person team was all bound together

and they had they had to walk like Six or whatever

you want to call it six -legged type thing and

they they would call out like find the card that

has someone with a mustache on it and they'd

have to go around the set and find this card

that had someone with a mustache on and bring

it back to him and then it was fine someone in

a uniform and I don't know I was not entertained

luckily it was only a half hour. Yeah So overall,

what do you think of the new like just overall

impression? What do you guys think of the new

shows that they've debuted? I Would stay away

from the preschool block altogether The midday

afternoon go ahead Steve I was gonna say pretty

much Midday afternoon has some possibilities

in them But so far it's pretty much the game

show thing that'll probably do it for me Yeah,

the game shows good. Like I said, there's gonna

be some people that are gonna get into like del

Toro quest there The storylines are good enough

in strawberry shortcake my little pony and pound

puppies and even cosmic quantum ray where they

might grab an audience somewhere I think the

hidden gem that might not be popular, but it

it works for me is that twisted whisker show

I just like it because it's just classic to me.

It's like a modern version of a classic story

classic cartoon Now we're going to get into the

shows that Hasbro has made deals with or the

hub has made deals with other people and stuff

that's brought over from the now defunct Discovery

Kids channel. or animal planet or a variety of

different places. Yeah, a variety of different

places. I'm gonna go through each block and list

all the shows and then we'll go back and talk

about each one. In the afternoons you're gonna

have Endurance, which was a Discovery Kids show.

Of course, Fraggle Rock. Yay. Batman Beyond,

which again, the complete series DVD set is coming

November 23rd. Eh, I already own it all. Whatever.

Men in Black, which is one of the worst cartoons

ever. That was decent. It wasn't good, but it

was decent. I didn't say it was the worst. I

said it was one of the worst cartoons ever. Tuttonstein,

which is a Discovery Kids show. Kenny the Shark,

which was a Discovery Kids show. And Meerkat

and Manor, which was an Animal Planet show. Out

of out of that group the only ones that I would

be interested in I already own the whole complete

series of the live -action Fragile Rock But I

still think it's great that it's on TV and Batman

Beyond, but I wouldn't watch any of that other

stuff. Yeah Fragile Rock and Batman Beyond are

the only thing I'd watch out of there and maybe

Men in Black if I wanted to go to sleep and And

right now they are playing Batman Beyond in the

prime and what I consider the prime time slot

which is you know when kids get out of school

um they're playing right now they're playing

Batman Beyond back -to -back with uh Men in Black

which I assume eventually that's going to turn

into Renegades and Transformers Prime oh I'm

sure but they'll bump Batman till later yeah

right now that's the time slot that those two

are in um the Kenny the shark show I'd cut a

couple of episodes when I back when I still had

digital cable it's okay it tries to be a very

smart jabber -jaw basically. I have no problem

with Meerkat Manor by the way. Fails miserably.

I don't have a problem with it. I've never even

actually really... I've seen like ads for the

show but it's not something I would sit down

to watch. And now we have the Prime Time block.

This one didn't get a name. So you know we had

that name for the early one, Habub, for the preschool

one. They didn't name any of their other blocks

until... What will get to a little bit later,

but I thought some of these should I had if they're

gonna do names for the early morning block Why

don't they do names for all of them even though

they're stupid names? Yeah This one basically

has all the classic sitcoms Happy Days Laverne

and Shirley Family Ties Doogie Howser and the

wonder years I think it's cool that they're doing

this and obviously the strategy is look at who's

the who's the parents now You know look at who

has the kids that would be watching the hub and

then play something that they can remember to

try to keep them throughout the day. Oh, yeah.

But, you know, I've never been a humongous fan

of any of those shows, but I still think it's

cool that they're all on kind of back to back.

I was a fan of Family Ties and Wonder Years,

but I was kind of a fan of Laverne and Shirley

when I was a kid, but it was more of like, oh,

let me just see Lenny and Squiggy. That those

are my favorite characters from that show happy

days. It's a good show. But again, it's obviously

Geared towards 50s buffs, right? Yeah, you know,

so which I thought it was kind of weird that

they put happy days in Laverne and Shirley in

there Well, those two things always aired almost

back -to -back affair. Yeah, right I mean I can

see family ties do you housing wonder years are

all the shows that the 80s kids grew up with

Yeah. Kind of. And I'm surprised they went as

old school as they did with Happy Days and Laverne

and Shirley instead of grabbing a couple more,

you know, 80s style. Well, it's like you said,

they're trying to capture like parents and grandparents.

Yeah. So. They definitely have a mixture. Yes.

And now it's time for the late night schedule,

which is called the Haboom. And they did some,

actually they did some decent commercials to

advertise this. They had a couple different Haboom

commercials that showed a little animation segments

or show segments from these three shows. I was

entertained. So you have the 1966 Batman live

action Adam West Burt Ward series. Which was

pretty cool. Very cool considering the rights

for it to be released on any kind of physical

or digital medium are so... tied up in hell that

at least it's this is this is one of those shows

that it was really it was a really awesome show

back in the sixties obviously were premiered

and for us in the eighties that grew up watching

its reruns it was awesome as well and because

it's not on dvd i like the fact that they've

got this on here and this is one of the only

ones that was a rerun show that i set to record

because i wanted to see it the first episode

uh... was a two -parter That was I believe the

first part was aired tonight And because this

is the first tonight actually right as we're

recording this we're recording this right after

the very first late -night block aired right

and and the Batman tonight was the first parter

that had the Riddler in it and Right pretty entertaining.

I think what they're I don't know obviously I

don't work for hub, so I can't really speak,

but I'm betting what they're going to do With

the batman show is air it just like it used to

air in the eighties where like Say you have a

two -parter or whatever parter and they're gonna

Do the same old and i'm assuming that obviously

it's the exact same episode so Because it's the

old show so they're still gonna have the thing

at the end of Tune in tomorrow night or next

week for you know, the same bat time same, you

know, you know what I mean? So yeah I can imagine

them just running it like that. Which is funny.

Yeah, it's very funny. And the other two of course

is Transformers Generation 1 and G .I. Joe, Real

American Hero. For me personally, I don't have

the G .I. Joe set yet, but I'm going to be getting

it eventually. I have the Matrix set for G1.

I do not want to see G1 with friggin commercials,

I just don't. I'm glad it's back on TV, I'm glad

that Hasbro is acknowledging that they have the

property and that kids are going to be able to

watch it and learn what their parents grew up

with. But for me personally, it's on TV fine.

I have a DVD set, I can watch the DVD set. Right.

But like we said before, for those that don't

have the DVD sets, it's something great that's

on once the kids are to bed from 11 to midnight

or depending on what time zone you're in. And

I think it's great to have these three back to

back. They did basically the same thing they

did with the prime time show. They took something

from the 60s and then backed it up against two

shows from the 80s. So it is interesting that

they keep mixing that up. Yes. And then the shows

that are, I guess, new that are still to air,

Transformers Prime... So far from what I... Did

you guys see that little like half second commercial

with Optimus Prime? They actually had a bunch

of commercials that aired throughout the first

day of the launch that showed different little

snippets here and there. Not enthused. No, not

at all. I'm still hopeful. No, not at all. Did

you see Optimus' face? It's fugly. I... I thought

the movie was bad. As far as the face. It's...

I really like Megatron's design. And I really

like Ratchet and Cliffjumper. But... Yeah, I

have no bones about them. But, wait, wait, wait.

Hold on, hold on. Have we seen Ratchet, Megatron,

and Cliffjumper animated? No, not yet. Okay,

so you could... I think they're back. They showed

Ratchet in one of the commercials. Okay, well

I must have missed that, but... As far as Megatron

goes, you can like his design all you want, but

until you see it in the animation, you know what

I mean? I agree. I'm still holding out hope that

it's gonna be something I can like. Until I see

otherwise. The only Transformers cartoon that

I like or that I can kind of tolerate having

emotable faces is animated. I am sorry. Optimus

Prime needs a fucking faceplate. This in transformers

prime. He needs a fucking faceplate. I'm just

saying I'm just saying like I this was the Just

reading all the message boards and whatnot the

the amount of I know there's a lot of people

that like the character designs and a lot of

people that are excited about the show But reading

all the negative Basically reactions by the fans.

It's almost identical to what happened when animated

came out So many people were enraged by animated

and look how many people ended up liking it.

I know but It's not differences. I think this

time around, I mean, granted, they have CGI,

which, you know, kudos to them for using some

form of it. But I think more people are going

to be pissed because it's not its own original

design. Exactly. It's more of a mixture. Yeah,

I myself. I'm not a fan of it, but I am glad

that they have the voice cast that they have.

Right. Oh yeah, I have no complaints with the

voice cast whatsoever, none. Still waiting to

see what the rock sounds like as Cliffjumper.

The problem, like Steve was saying, the problem

with Prime is it's meshing... Stuff together

that shouldn't be brought together. It's meshing

animated in movie design Yeah, I really wish

they wouldn't put bulkhead in there It's like

forcing two opposing magnets to make a charge

and it's not friggin working Yeah, I'm gonna

wait until I see an actual episode, but I understand

what you're saying Did they show anything of

GI Joe renegades? I thought they were gonna show

something in the in the preview No, the sneak

preview got completely pulled off the schedule

with really no explanation whatsoever And so

the only thing we've seen on a GI Joe is basically

the same little snippets like we saw with Transformers

Prime You see snake eyes jumping through a couple

of things. I think you see Scarlett a couple

different times But they basically showed nothing

about that the character designs for this one

looks terrible though in my opinion I'm gonna

hold out. Hope and I'm gonna watch an episode

before I judge it but I do not care who they

have voicing the characters because in all honesty

They could make everybody else look identical

for the most part Feature wise and costume wise

but they're gonna fuck up Cobra commander. Oh,

yeah, of course they are and they do have a they

do have a decent cast so far, but And they got

Charlie add commander his voice is going to be

lame as hell They're going to do it completely

wrong and not to mention they're probably going

to take the stupid faceplate from the movie which

again is You know go back and see an earlier

episode of GCR towards the beginning and hear

my rant about that You don't think Charlie Adler

can pull off the voice. It's not that I don't

think he can pull it off I would rather see Scott

McNeil do it because I actually took over for

Chris Lana in the deke series and sounded close

enough that i didn't notice that they changed

he sounded a hell of a lot better oh yeah but

they not better than chris lotta yeah okay much

more clearer anyways but in any case uh i would

rather see one of the original 80s uh cover commander

costumes Either I know they won't do the hood

because they'll say that that's got you know,

Nazi tendencies But do I'd rather see the deep

the deep version than the one that I've seen

so far the silver armor Yeah, even that's better.

See to me. That was my favorite armor. Oh Yeah,

that was the only figure I ever had I actually

have all three Cobra commanders on my I do box

Yes, I am a great fan of the 80s Cobra commander

and even resolute did a good job on that But

I think they're gonna screw it up in renegades

Yeah, resolute may always be the best animated

looking out of all of them to me in my opinion

this animated however, a lot of the voices seem

to mesh together because They all sounded very

similar, right? No, I'm just saying from a visual

standpoint. Oh, yeah, that to me is probably

the best GI Joe cartoon So other than these other

two there's kind of a weird variety of other

stuff. That's yeah Yeah, you got Dan versus clue,

which is the board game in some type of I don't

know if it's gonna be a game show or it's gonna

be actually an actual like Cartoon, right and

then you have hub world whatever the hell that's

gonna be who knows Rl Steins the hunting hour

Okay, the 99 Wonder what it's off of some type

of comic book. I just don't know much about it

Well, the joke I was gonna make was the 99. So

where are the red balloons? Oh god And then watching

too many one -hit wonder stuff shut up. That

stuff's awesome And the littlest pet shop hunch

Whatever. Yeah, not too thrilled about the rest

of the yet to be aired except for Transformers

Prime and renegades And then they're going to

those two. Yeah And then for Saturday's shows,

they're going to show Adventures of Chuck and

Larry. Now, does this have anything to do with

the Adam Sandler movie? That's what I was going

to ask. It looks like it's geared towards little

kids. It would be awesome if they made that animated.

And then they're going to be showing animated

series reruns of Where in the World is Carmen

Sandiego? I dig that. I wish they were also showing

the game show though. Yes, we're in the world

and yeah, that would be awesome And then they're

also going I'm just gonna run down this list.

I'm not even gonna talk about the premier dates

I'm just gonna run down it really quick. They're

gonna be doing a repeat of discovery kids series

adventure camp Dino sapien the future is wild

gross ology growing up creepy I almost said growing

up gaudy, holy crap. The Saddle Club, Scout Safari,

Sirius, Strange Days at Blake Holesley High,

holy crap, that's a long fucking name. The Time

Warp Trio, Time Blazers, Trading Spaces, Boys

vs. Girls, Truth or Scare, and that's it. Yeah,

and you know, I give them credit for not just

completely abandoning the entire Discovery Kids

lineup because I'm sure some of those shows had

people that were watching them. But I'm glad

that they're not giving these I'm glad it's not

all this Or like a majority of this while they

filter in one or two new shows at a time I'm

glad they filled up their entire slate of regular

Time slots with new stuff. Yeah, this stuff is

mostly everything I've seen as far as schedule

goes these discovery kids series air early early

morning Yeah, so nobody's gonna be watching them

I think the only show on this entire rerun list

or old shows list from Discovery Kids that I

ever watched, and I thought was fairly in, I'm

a huge HGTV watcher. Don't ask me why. I find

it very educational watching House Hunters and

Property Virgins and all that stuff. Before I

got into HGTV, I used to watch TL's The Learning

Channel for a dating story and a wedding story

and all that kind of crap. One of the first home

improvement shows I ever watched was Trading

Spaces and Discovery Kids had basically another

version of that where it's boys versus girls,

where you have like two boys and two girls basically

switch houses. So instead of like a couple, like

an adult couple trading houses, you have kids

trading houses. It's kind of like taking the

Extreme Makeover Home Edition team just splitting

them up and having you know somebody do the boys

stuff like the kids stuff and somebody having

to do the adult stuff right so I thought you

know I like that they're doing that but I don't

know this is still for me that there's there's

nothing here that I can't either already have

or eventually have on DVD that is worth me spending

the extra money just to get this channel on digital

cable. No, and I wouldn't I wouldn't spend extra

money to get this channel either, but I do love

that I get the channel. You know, if it's something

that you get with your package, it's something

that's better than a lot of the other cartoon

lineup channels. I would watch a lot more shows

on this than I would like Cartoon Network or

like Nick Jr. or whatever the Nick Collodion

channels called nowadays link tunes. Yeah, cubo

has some decent stuff, you know, it's repeating

Sheeran brave star and he man right now, so that's

kind of cool But there's more stuff on this that

I would watch I didn't mention that they also

have a family movie Slot or a family movie night

slot I don't know if that's going to be every

day or how often that's going to be in the schedule.

So far they've shown the Garfield live action

slash CGI movie. I know they have one of the

next ones they have on slot is Muppet Treasure

Island. So they might be putting a decent amount

of animated movies or kids movies into those

time slots. So that's kind of cool. The only

other thing we didn't there that I didn't mention

is I don't just for the launch They did a whole

lot of promotion during those first two days.

I don't know how long they're gonna do it But

almost every single commercial break there was

a number you could call in a code word that you

could give them and the first Ten or that it

was either the first ten or the number ten caller

got some type of prize They were giving stuff

away from I mean some of it was just Tents and

badminton sets and stuff like that, but they

gave away acoustic guitars. They gave away Yeah,

a couple different commercial breaks gave away

flat -screen TVs So I will give them credit for

putting a lot of effort into this launch And

whoever's using whoever is in charge of their

Twitter feed It's constantly being updated. That's

good. Well, it's constantly being updated like

saying like Well, we hope you enjoyed blah blah

blah coming up next is blah blah blah Okay, so

there's a little overkill. No, I know I'm not

I'm not saying it's overkill, but I mean for

you know yeah If you're not actually like say

you've got Twitter on your phone, and you're

watching. I don't know History channel yeah,

you know you can look at your Twitter feeds or

whatever and say oh well Hub network just posted

a tweet saying War Dawn is going to be coming

up or whatever, you know? And they could be,

you know, setting the mold for that too. Right,

right. Maybe a lot of other channels will start

doing something like that. But I think they're

definitely putting a lot of effort. I think they

put a lot of time into the planning. And, you

know, I think it's wise for them to hold off

some of the new shows for another month or two.

Well, Prime, I don't know about Renegades, but

I know Prime won't air until December, so. Well,

I've heard conflicting reports about that. Some

people are saying it's gonna air the third week

in November some people are saying December But

I think either regardless of when it airs I think

it's good to hold off on those because then it'll

give them another influx of people You know starting

to watch those Whereas you know the original

launch might have worn off by then right and

I like all the promo spots I like the the way

they go to commercials the way they go to and

from shows they do a lot of putting on the screen

what the next Two hours worth of programming

will be so people can kind of see what's coming

up and whatnot So I'll give them credit for what

they're doing a lot of the shows. I'll never

watch again after I had this marathon But there's

definitely a little something out there for everybody.

Yes any Final thoughts Steve Well, if I had the

channel I would probably watch it But since I

do not I will probably wait until For instance,

I believe isn't a new ThunderCats show gonna

be on this station. I believe it is. Okay, then

I'll probably catch that TF Prime and GI Joe

Renegades on YouTube or wherever the hell I can

find it. Yeah, and for those people out there

that don't get the hub channel don't be too discouraged

because I know it was within hours of the first

My Little Pony airing on the hub that it was

uploaded to YouTube. Didn't check it. I didn't

check any of the other shows yet, but my little

pony was instantly on YouTube So not surprising

yeah, and it was crystal clear looking almost

just as good as it did on TV Yes So I think that's

gonna do it for our hub preview or post view

or review or whatever the hell we're gonna call

this I don't I don't know Oh god, that's the

worst fucking name ever. At least you didn't

turn it into hubbub. No, I had a website called

The Hub and yes, they... Damn thieves. Thank

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